


Next Days

by liquidCitrus



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Anarchist Discourse, Angst, Grief/Mourning, Helplessness, Houston Spies (Blaseball Team), Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season 9 Day X, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27660254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidCitrus/pseuds/liquidCitrus
Summary: "It could've been here. It could've been us. The only reason it wasn't...""...was because we were knocked out all of five days beforeithappened."A series of snapshots of the Spies after the Shelled One's Pods were spirited away.
Relationships: Alexandria Rosales & Fitzgerald Blackburn, Karato Bean & Theodore Holloway, honestly at this point just everyone & everyone
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	1. Season 9, Day Y

Afterwards -

 _Afterwards_ -

"Room for one more?" Alexandria says, at the door to the commentator's booth of An Undisclosed Location, the Spies' stadium.

Fitzgerald Blackburn is listlessly staring out at the empty field through the one-way glass. "Uh, sure. Close the door behind you?"

Alexandria takes the other seat, swinging a microphone arm out of the way. "Been looking for you. Wanted to see if you were all right. After, you know, that."

"Yeah, uh, answer's probably obvious." Fitzgerald laughs, in that weird raspy tone of theirs. "It could've been here. It could've been us. The only reason it wasn't..."

"...was because we were knocked out all of five days before _it_ happened. I almost don't regret losing. But only almost." Alexandria unwraps a piece of gum; pops it into their mouth.

Fitzgerald leans back. "You heard anything about the Shoe Thieves?"

The Charleston Shoe Thieves had stumbled off the field afterwards, hollow-eyed and barely standing. Alexandria had arranged for agents to deliver them comfort food and keep an eye on them. "My sources say they can't even look at a blaseball without flinching right now."

Fitz hisses through their... teeth? Do they even have teeth? They make that sharp intake of breath noise, in any case. "What do we _do_?"

Alexandria chews their gum. "Wait and see."

"No, but what do we _do_? We can't just _leave_ things like this, we can't just have our lives tied to the whims of a giant peanut who keeps taking everything from us!"

"We don't have enough _information_ to know what to do. Where would we even _find_ the damn thing? What could we possibly do to it? Chuck explosives uselessly at its shell?"

"Spoilsport."

"You know I'm right."

Fitzgerald slumps onto the table. "I absolutely despise the feeling of being helpless."

"Yeah," Alexandria says. "Me too."

* * *

Morrow Wilson is on the couch in the common room, wrapped in a blanket, stepping through the video from that fateful fight frame by frame.

"What do you expect to accomplish here?" says Marco Escobar, stopping behind Morrow to look at the screen.

Morrow scowls. "It's not impossible that some of this was staged. I know just how much you can accomplish with movie magic."

"Yeah, sure," Marco retorts, "and next thing you'll tell me is that the moon lander was made of cheese."

"It's the _moon_ that's supposed to be made of cheese and the _moon landing_ that's supposed to be fake, dumbass."

"Duh -- wait, I think I saw something. Do you mind passing me the remote?"

Morrow does so, and Marco rewinds the last second, and steps through it more slowly. The audio isn't playing at this speed of frame-by-frame, and anyway Math's probably doing the audio analysis anyway, but nevertheless, they both know by heart that this is when the enormous peanut taunted them all: "WITNESS TRUE POWER".

Marco stops on a frame, then flicks it back, and forth, and back, and forth. "See that?"

Morrow leans forwards. "What am I supposed to be seeing here?"

"Look at how all the Pods' facial expressions shift simultaneously. That's when the pity drops off their faces. That's when they stop holding back."

"...They were _playing_ with us."

* * *

For a distraction, Karato Bean's gone out with Theodore Holloway for some skating: one on a skateboard, the other on rollerblades.

At some point, Karato stops, picks up the board, and leans against a stoplight, closing their eyes.

Theodore - Teddy, to their friends - pirouettes and brakes. "Something up?"

"I just... need a moment." Karato digs around in their belt pouch for their earbuds, plugs them into an ancient music player, and cues up the sound of the ocean they recorded last time they were on the island.

Then Karato scowls, rips out the earbuds, and flings them out into the street. "It used that... that _nickname_ , it called him _its_ Dork, I - I can't just -"

Teddy opens their mouth to say something, but Karato shushes them with a sharp hand motion.

"I can't very well just _tell_ everyone back there that my heart is breaking! Son gets away with it, Morrow gets away with it, but I'm supposed to be the one who's easygoing, I'm supposed to be on island time, I'm supposed to have a heart as big as the ocean, but right now it's just! It's just." Karato puts a hand over their face. "Look at me now."

"Hey, so, um, do you mind if I..." Teddy asks.

"Whatever you want."

There is an enormous pink teddy bear sitting on the sidewalk. Karato buries their face in it, silently shaking.

By the time the sun comes up over the horizon, Karato is at one of the back entrances to Spies HQ, a skateboard under one arm and an enormous stuffed bear under the other.

* * *

Comfort Septemberish is with Malik Romayne chopping vegetables for stew.

To break up the silence, Malik asks: "How are you feeling?"

"Is it in you?" Comfort puts down the knife, trembling slightly.

"I'm... yeah, I'm not doing great either." Malik scoops up some chopped onions and puts them in a bowl. "But doing things helps. Is there something you want to do?"

"The greatest tragedy is indifference. There are some things money can't buy," Comfort says. "Like a good neighbor, MasterCard is there. Zoom zoom."

Malik turns to look at Comfort. "You want to be there? To help?"

Comfort nods. "Expect more. Pay less. Just do it."

It's the onions that are making Malik's eyes tear up, right? And not something else? "We - we all need to take care of each other. I think people are helping the Shoe Thieves. But I think maybe the Tacos might need some sympathy too."

"Have it... your way?"

"They lost all their pitchers."

Comfort stares. "Think outside the bun," they say, quietly.

"Do you want to help me put together a care package? Once we're finished here? We just need to get this simmering on the stove, and then I'll have a couple hours free."

"When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight," Comfort says, reaching for the next tomato.

* * *

Denzel Scott and Math Velazquez are on a long drive. Well, properly speaking, Denzel is the car, who happens to be driving, and Math is just in the driver's seat to provide plausible deniability because self-driving cars haven't been invented yet.

In any case, they're out in the Texas hinterlands, where there is nothing but dry scrub and creosote. Denzel's turned off the radio, so they're alone with their thoughts.

"...So what happens now?" Denzel asks.

Math, startled from contemplation, hits the "repeat" button on the tape deck.

"I was asking, what happens now?"

Math's reply is an incomprehensible modem noise.

"I thought the Crabs were for sure, too. But I don't think they would've been any more capable of facing the Peanut."

More highly compressed noise from Math.

"Yeah, Reese was talking to me about that. Did you know the Crabs are afraid of us? Our pitchers?"

Math's responses are barely distinguishable from static.

"Ha. Always here with the statistics. You really earn that nickname, you know."

...

"You're already planning for the next one, I assume."

...

"The Peanut was _absolutely_ cheating. We can't cheat back. Not without someone else's help. And I don't like our odds with the Squid."

...

"That sounds even worse."

...

"I don't see what black swans have to do with this."

...

"What did you say he said?"

...

"Have hope? ...That's going to be hard."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Denzel genuinely thinks that Math is a normal human being, and not, say, the sentient manifestation of mathematics, and reacts accordingly.
> 
> I am unsure how I made myself sad with advertising slogans, but here we are.
> 
> I plan to add a good handful more chapters with reactions to various other events, eventually catching up to the present day - we'll see how that works out.


	2. Season 10, Day 0

The siesta is never, ever long enough.

Morrow Wilson has always been this tired. It's the kind of tired where everything feels like struggling underneath a rubber sheet that's been glued to the floor. It's the kind of tired where no amount of sleep is ever enough.

Nevertheless, Morrow gets up, and reheats some macaroni and cheese from the fridge, and turns on the ancient tube television above the kitchen table. There's a horpse race on. May as well watch. Better than listening to the negativity that keeps bouncing around inside their skull.

And then of course Theodore Holloway comes barging in the door, roller skates clattering.

"I was trying to _watch_ something!" Morrow protests.

Theodore - Teddy - picks up an apple and then glances at the television. "You don't even _like_ horpse racing."

Morrow says, "Okay, fine, you got me. I'm trying not to think about things too hard."

"Things like...?"

Morrow stares at their macaroni. "I keep wondering what an incineration would feel like."

"As someone who's had third degree burns," Teddy says, "first it's horrible, and then your nerves die, and then you don't have anything left to feel it with."

"...Thanks for actually answering the question. Usually, if I try to ask people this kind of thing, they either tell me not to worry about it or suddenly become extremely worried about me."

"Way I see it, better that you know what you're scared of. Let me know if you want any more hot takes." Teddy winks, and swings round the doorframe and out into the hall.

* * *

Reese Clark is walking through the back corridors of the Spies' stadium, lost in thought, when they realize that their feet have carried them to the Spies' locker room. They absently unlock the door with the iris scanner, and enter.

The first thing they notice is Jordan Hildebert, lying facedown on one of the benches.

"The hell?" Reese says.

"Oh." Jordan sits up. Their camera whirs; refocuses. "Didn't notice you there."

Reese says, "Question stands. The hell're you doing here, of all places?"

"I needed some time to... think."

Reese sits down next to Jordan. "Can we have an honest chat, without all the admittedly hilarious ideological and political posturing? You know, faceless entity to faceless entity."

"Everything is political."

"You know what I mean."

"Well, say what you have to say and I'll do my best not to be a total saguaro about it."

Reese pulls a spare ear out of their pocket and fidgets with it. "How do you keep talking about fighting the gods and building a revolution, in this world we live in? How are you not constantly unspeakably terrified of how many more of us are going to have to break, have to die, before things get better?"

"I _am_ constantly unspeakably terrified."

"How can you go on like this? How can you not... care about it?"

"We're already breaking. We're already dying. We're already spending our lives banging helplessly on the inside of our peanut shells. The difference is that if we can believe in tomorrow, if we can fight for something..." Jordan sits up, straighter. "Then maybe it'll be worth it."

"And if it never gets better, and you're just deluding yourself?"

"Proceeding under the assumption that I _am_ deluding myself, which I would object to if I hadn't agreed to the premise of this conversation, then at the very least I will have spent my life with some shred of hope to cling to, rather than none at all."

"And if it's pointless?"

"Let me believe. Let me _dream_ ," Jordan says. "Let me have this for myself."

"I will never understand you," Reese says, walking away and shutting the door behind them.

As soon as the door to the locker room is closed, Reese sits on the floor outside it. Jordan lies back down, inside.

Both of them think, simultaneously: _Why do I do this to myself?_

* * *

"Afternoon, Fitz," Denzel Scott says. (As a normal human person, you know, in a suit and tie. Not as a car. At least, not today.)

Fitzgerald Blackburn folds down their newspaper and puts it aside. "Denzel. What brings you here?"

Denzel sits in the next chair over. "I wanted to talk to you a bit about succession planning."

Fitzgerald dreads succession planning. It's one thing to experience that gut-twisting terror when someone burns to ash on the field - _that could've been me_ \- but it's quite another thing to call that knowledge of mortality to mind on purpose. Alexandria says that they find it calming, to work through the hypotheticals and know that every last possibility has been accounted for, up to and including their own death. As best as Fitzgerald can tell, Math is the same.

Then again, Reese tried to submit an entire bucket of facial features instead of a will last season, so Fitzgerald can't be the only one for which it's a subject too fraught to think about.

"I know. I keep _meaning_ to, it's just..." Fitzgerald gestures. "Things come up."

"It is very easy to _let_ things come up," Denzel says. "Have to drive my oldest kid to elbowball practice, haven't had a dinner date with the spouse lately, the lawn needs mowing, someone's needed to infiltrate that cocktail party, need to leave the car in the shop for an afternoon, you know?"

"You are literally your own car."

Denzel laughs. "Okay, fine, bad example, but the point stands."

"So let me get this straight. You're accusing me of procrastination."

"Well, if you're putting it off, you're probably putting it off for a reason," says Denzel. "Think about the reason."

As soon as the idea surfaces, Fitzgerald is already tearing up. They put their face in their hands. "...I can't. I can't do it."

"Mm?"

Fitzgerald is crying. "Every time I try, I keep remembering that I'm someone else's ashes."

Denzel reaches over and drops a nearby box of tissues in Fitzgerald's lap. "I'm sorry. But it does have to get done. How can I make it easier for you?"

* * *

"So, do we have a plan?" Son Scotch asks, over late-night milk and cookies, while Alexandria does paperwork.

"We have at least six hundred plans on file, kiddo." Alexandria looks up. "Be more specific."

Son asks, "Do we have a plan that will keep us safe from the Peanut?"

"We've rigged the stadium with explosives and are presently retrofitting the emergency tunnels as blast shelters to hold the spectators," Alexandria says. "We've been modifying the radar so it can detect non-metallic incoming objects. We're in the process of equipping every janitor and groundskeeper with hatchets. We're going to see if we can get the Agency to have fighter jets ready to scramble. We're going to do our best to defend ourselves."

"None of those will stop it from coming back," Son says.

Alexandria puts their pen down. "We don't know how to stop it from coming back."

"But Denzel said you'd figure out how to make it stop and everything would be okay!"

"Denzel's a great guy, but he has a PhD in denial."

"But..."

"Sorry, hon," Alexandria says. "I wish I could promise you more. But I can't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's this thing in a lot of noir and spy fiction, where the protagonists are often alcoholics. I think the Spies know this is a risk in their genre - er, I mean line of work - and so they put a lot of effort into making the internal culture as emotionally supportive and resilient as possible. This has been _sorely_ tested by the return of blaseball turning out this catastrophic, but everyone does their best.


	3. Season 10, Day 100

Marco Escobar stands somewhere outside Philadelphia, staring at a grave marker.

Spies only ever mark their incinerated players as missing in action, never killed. But the Pies held a funeral for Yeong-Ho Benitez, and so here they are.

From deep inside a pocket Marco withdraws a handful of shredded paper that had once been a letter.

_You were the only one who didn't treat me differently after the summoning,_ Marco Escobar had written. _Everyone else thought I was suddenly a terrifying creepy weirdo, that I was - I mean, I'd gotten a certain spirit to help me with batting, it turned my eyes red, sometimes the spirit comes to me in my sleep and starts saying weird things, but I'm still Marco._

_Is it a matter of operational security or something? Even swapped-in players from other teams, even Alternate Math, they get integrated eventually. But Jordan still covers up their work when I come in. And Denzel can't meet my eyes anymore._

_I'm still the same person. I wish I could figure out how to convince them of that._

_\- 'Sco_

Marco kneels and puts the wad of shredded paper on the grave, where flowers ought to go. They stand and stare at it for a long, long moment, and then walk away.

The others will come here, in their own time, and do the same.

* * *

Sosa Hayes - or, more precisely, So, Sa, and Hayes - sit with Son Scotch in their room, playing some cart-racing videogame or other.

"Hey," Son says, between rounds. "Why don't you..." They gesture to the empty trenchcoat on the floor. "You know? I mean, York exists, NaN exists, I exist, you wouldn't get kicked out just for not being adults."

"We're in one slot on the roster," Sa says. "Not three."

"Well, now that teams aren't always fourteen players anymore, I could talk to Alex about -"

"No," all three say simultaneously.

Son puts down the controller. "What?"

So turns to look at Son. "Being only one player means that nobody can ever separate us. Ever."

"Because of..." Realization dawns on Son's face. They wince at the remembered screech of feedback, the sound that still makes their ears ring. "Oh."

"Yeah." Hayes selects the next racing course. "I want to get back to our game."

"Of course," Son says, scrambling over to get their controller.

* * *

Fitzgerald Blackburn pads into the kitchen somewhere past midnight, and finds Alexandria Rosales there.

Alex looks up from their paperwork. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Yeah," Fitz says, sitting at the kitchen table and putting their head in their hands.

"Chamomile?" Alex is already getting up to start the kettle.

"Please."

In companionable silence, Alex makes the tea and brings two mugs of it back to the table. "Anything you want to talk about?"

Fitz holds the mug in both hands and stares into the steam. "How do you _stand_ it?"

"Stand what?" Alex slides into the seat next to them.

"Being afraid all the time."

Alex drinks cautiously from their own mug of tea. "Afraid of?"

"Of everything that's going to happen." Fitz gestures at nothing in particular. "How can you still walk onto the field every day, knowing that it... that people might..."

"By putting one foot in front of the other." Alex puts their hand on Fitz's. "Don't borrow trouble, the interest compounds."

Fitz puts an arm around Alex's shoulders and sags. "It's hard."

"Yeah." Alex reaches over to support Fitz. "I know."

"How do you think we'll do in the playoffs?"

"I hope we get close." Alex sighs. "And that someone else is there to take the brunt of the Peanut's anger."

"Someone else?"

"I made some - some calls -" Alex stops, takes a deep breath, tries again. "I did what I could to give us all a chance. I don't know if it was enough."

"There's no way to know if you've done enough." Fitz's voice is matter-of-fact. "We do our best with what we have."

"I suppose." Alex glances over. "Also, you haven't touched your tea. I didn't just make it for perfume, you know."

"Why do you have to be like this," Fitz grumbles, good-naturedly, and picks up the mug.

* * *

Jordan Hildebert sits as far away from Denzel Scott as possible on the couch, as they stare at their respective electronic devices without saying anything. "Piece-of-eight for your thoughts?" Denzel says.

Jordan turns. "What kind of thoughts?"

"I don't know." Denzel stretches and grunts. "The future, I guess."

"I'm not even scared anymore," Jordan says. "Just... frustrated."

"...Explain what you mean by that?"

"Here's the thing that's getting me. I keep thinking that maybe the world is so terrible that burning it down is the only solution left. I keep thinking that maybe I should just stop moving, go hide in a bunker until whatever it is has scoured the earth and left nothing but destruction behind, and then try again from scratch once the whole world has been destroyed."

"I don't know. I kind of like the world existing. It's where I keep all my stuff."

"I've seen too many people broken by the present state of the world to be happy with perpetuating it. Do you know how many homeless people and how many housing units are in this city alone? Do you not realize how much food gets thrown away?"

Denzel scratches their jaw absently. "Couldn't you -"

"I tried to change the world the proper way! It didn't work! Pull my records and see the thirty-five years of public service there!"

Denzel stares silently at Jordan.

"I am _this_ close to burning the world down myself," and here Jordan makes a pinching motion with thumb and forefinger, "and the only thing that stops me is knowing that even if I used every resource I had at my disposal and stole all of the Agency's too, I could hardly even make a dent. It'd just fill right back in."

"So..."

"So if you think that maybe I'm not as enthused about killing the Peanut as I should be, you would be right." Jordan leans back. "As far as I'm concerned, we're screwed either way."

"See," Denzel says, "you're forgetting something. You're not the only one who wants to change the world that way."

"What."

Denzel shifts. The couch's old springs creak. "Have you talked to anyone else in the league about this?"

"Why is that relevant?"

"The thing about being definitionally normal is that I know what 'normal' actually is. And how fragile it can be under the right circumstances." Denzel makes an expansive gesture. "The world has changed before. It can change again. You've seen the Arab Spring, the Baltimore Uprising, the Second Emu War. You're right, one person can't do these things. But _people_ can, and they do."

"All right. What am I supposed to do, then?"

"Reese would say something funny but completely unhelpful about getting your ass off that ideological high horse. I'm not gonna do that."

Jordan snorts. "Thanks."

"Do some work on the ground. Talk to people."

"I mean, I do talk to people, but then all we do is agree on how much the world sucks and it ends up just being depressing all round."

"Give them ideas about what could be better." Denzel gestures. "You want to set people on fire, not burn them out."

Jordan turns abruptly to Denzel. "What the hell was that metaphor? Seriously?"

Denzel's face reddens. "I, uh, I mean... right. I. You know, I probably shouldn't say that again."

" _Please_ don't."


End file.
